Open Recruitment of Graduates for National Civil Service A Case Study of Australia 1
10. Conclusion
This study considers steps that should be taken to increase the number of people in both the public and private sector who have received graduate education in the humanities in order to develop internationally viable human resources. In Japan, no preference is accorded in civil service hiring to those holding graduate degrees. Accordingly, many talented people in Japan do not go on to study social sciences at university. This would appear to be one reason that private-sector companies also do not actively recruit graduate degree holders.
Why does the Japanese government not hire graduate degree holders? This study seeks to answer this question by analyzing why foreign governments hire graduate degree holders. Attention and analysis
2011-2012 JIIA Research Project: Policies Needed to Ensure Japan’s International Competitiveness
199
was focused on Australia as a case study in this regard, as Australia shares many points in common with Japan, such as a low number of political appointees among the civil service bureaucracy. The results were unexpected.
Because Australia, unlike Japan, has no uniform civil servant examination, individual ministries/agencies are responsible for hiring civil servants to fill specific positions through open recruiting. Should ministries or agencies desire graduate degree holders, they are able to actively recruit such persons. Because all government positions are filled by open recruiting, civil servants are also motivated to undergo training in order to obtain better positions. Civil servants thus earn degrees and actively utilize graduate training programs made available by the government to upgrade their own skills.
In other words, Australia’s flexible system of civil service hiring allows individual ministries and agencies to hire graduate degree holders in order to place the right person in the right job. Simply put, Japan’s present national civil service hiring system is hobbling the international competitiveness of Japan’s human resources. How should this system be reformed?
To take a lesson from Australia’s civil service hiring system, an effective move would be to allow individual ministries on their own to engage in open recruitment to fill open positions. Only by doing this will it become possible for civil servants hired for specific positions by specific ministries or agencies to advance their careers in other ministries or agencies.
On the other hand, there is no promotion by seniority in the Australian civil service system, or a promotion examination in the Japanese sense. Because the system involves broad recruitment of applicants for the vacancies available, individuals with high foreign language skills are selected for positions requiring a foreign language, and a doctorate is required in order to vie against a foreign bureaucrat with a doctorate.
This may appear vastly different from the Japanese system. However, Australia, too, had recruited civil servants across ministries and agencies via civil service examinations until the 1980s. That this approach was changed to today’s open recruitment demonstrates that such reforms of the civil service system are not impossible, even in Japan.
References
Advisory Group on Reform of Australian Government Administration, “AHEAD OF THE GAME Blueprint for the reform of Australian government administration”, March 2010
U.S. Merits Systems Protection Board, "Attracting the Next Generation: A Look at Federal Entry-Level New Hires", January 2008
United States General Accounting Office, Richard L. Fogel, "Report of the National Commission on the Public Service", April 1989
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, "Report on Inspection Tour of Australian Graduate Schools for Policy Studies", October 1, 2009
Benchmarking Australian Government Administration Performance, KPMG, November 2009, P12 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, "School Basic Survey"
http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?bid=000001015837&cycode=0 Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics http://nces.ed.gov/
Australian Government Department of Education
http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Pages/2010StudentF ullYear.aspx
Notes:
1 This study was made possible with the full support of Professor Jenny Corbett of the Australian National University Crawford School of Economics and Government. Professor Corbett went to the trouble of referring and introducing the author to the various individuals interviewed in Australia. Further, this study was made possible by conducting interviews of the previous and current Commission Member Stephen Sedgwick and previous Commission Member Lynelle Briggs and current Human Resources Bureau Director Ian Fitzgerald of the Australian Public Service Commission, Barnadette Welch of the Prime Minister's Office, James Llewelyn, Martin Walker, Darren Hansen and David Lowe from various ministries, and Tom Kompas, Veronica Taylor, John Wanna and Rikki Kersten of the Australian National University faculty. The author would like to express his deep gratitude to the individuals who agreed to be interviewed. The author also received valuable advice from Masahiro Onishi of the National Personnel Authority, Personnel Affairs Division Director Norio Fukuda of the National Personnel Authority, and International Affairs Division Director Hiroko Shimada of Cabinet Secretariat. The author would like to extend his gratitude to them as well.
2011-2012 JIIA Research Project: Policies Needed to Ensure Japan’s International Competitiveness
201
2 http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/List.do?bid=000001015837&cycode=0 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, "School Basic Survey"
3 http://nces.ed.gov/ Department of Education [National Center for Education Statistics]
4 http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Pages/2010StudentFullYear.aspx
Bachelor's Pass was used to account for the number of undergraduate degree holders. Honors degree holders are not included in master’s degree holders.
5 In addition to policy agencies such as Treasury, Finance and Foreign Affairs, there is a ministry called Centrelink Australia. Centrelink is a government office that specializes in the payment of, for example, annuities, health benefits, financial assistance, labor assistance and unemployment benefits.
Centrelink is a new ministry that was created by splitting payment departments off of the government offices, which were vertically consolidated and concurrently working on both policies and payment, and then consolidating them. For example, policies relating to health services are handled by a policy agency, but health insurance is executed by Centrelink. Whereas an individual had to receive payments from different government offices when collecting annuities, unemployment benefits and the like, all payment functions were consolidated to provide a one-stop service for the added convenience of beneficiaries. At the same time, the separation allowed for a rational division of labor, since a payment agency such as Centrelink differs completely in nature from policy agencies. While Centrelink rarely hires individuals with higher academic degrees, policy agencies hire many.
6 Benchmarking Australian Government Administration Performance, KPMG, November 2009, P11
7 National Graguate Institute for Public Policy Studies, 2009.